Re: GNUstep Window Manager (was RE: Idea)

[Nicola Pero]

> Hi,
> 
> I just tried the latest snapshot (core + examples).

Hi Helge, I must say I appreciate a lot this constructive attitude. :-) It
also helps us to understand what the people really miss - since it seems
people like you and Philippe are unhappy and I fail to understand why.
 
> Maybe these are the mentioned X problems, but it's at least unusable
> with Exceed on NT as the X11 server. Eg the menu doesn't work at all
> (goes away when clicking on it, flickers, ...) In Calculator.app the
> window-close button doesn't work.

Yes - these are the mentioned X problems.

With Window Maker all this stuff works, with other window managers it's
more difficult.  One problem is also that if your window manager policy is
not click-to-focus, then it gets even more difficult to make the OPENSTEP
API work with your X window manager policy.  We probably need to break the
API there to make our apps survive - but how we detect the different
window manager policy ?

> In Edit.app I get a textarea which is about 200 pixels wide, but
> everything is wrapped at about 80 pixels - some input vanishes, some
> input wraps. Additionally the textfield has two cursors ...

Edit.app is a very old app not maintained any more.  Try Ink.app instead.
 
> In Finger.app this happens when clicking the stop-button (bug in
> gstep-base NSTask ?):

The bug is more likely in Finger.app itself.  It's harmless anyway.

> nsbrowser.app looks fine, though it isn't smooth at all (dual-PIII
> with 512MB memory ..)

> Unfortunatly I can't try TextEdit in usr-apps since I can't open a
> document because the menu is broken. Also it doesn't open documents
> passed on the cmdline.

Another very old, unmaintained app.

I'm sorry - this is my fault :-) - I promised I would rearrange the
examples module so that it's clear which are the interesting apps to try,
and which are the old ones we don't support anymore.  I'll try rearranging
it tonight.

> Further, if no DISPLAY variable is set, any GS UI program segfaults.

If you elaborate more on this, we will be very grateful, and fix it.


> As Philippe already mentioned, all the samples are absolutly trivial.
> There is no single, real application available as an example.
> What would you suggest as such an example. 

I don't dare suggesting any application since it seems every application -
except stuff like the gimp and kword - is an `absolutely trivial'
application.  Of course, I don't have the time to write something like the
gimp just to show to people that they can use the library.

Anyway, if you are just interested to see the `basic widgets' working, you
may try GSTest.